bunch n.1
1. of people, a group; usu. in phr. best of the bunch, best of a bad bunch.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Gul’s Horne-Booke 37: It skils not, though there be none dubd in your Bunch. | |
| Proverbs 245: Gimmingham, Trimmingham, Knapton and Trunch, / North Repps and South Repps are all of a bunch. | |
| Better Late than Never 20: Think you seem the happiest of the bunch. | |
| Navy at Home II 126: They handed him up, to a bunch of these fair creatures. | |
| Leicester Chron. 11 Nov. 3/1: We have received three poetic communications [...] The last is, so far, to our thinking, the ’bast of the bunch’. | |
| Armagh Guardian 8 Oct. 7/1: [of a marble] Yes, that is the best: it is the king [...] it is the very best of the bunch. | |
| Sporting Life 20 Mar. 2/4: Conundrum is decidedly the best of the bunch as he is a good horse and a splendid mover. | |
| Manchester Courier 27 Mar. 3/6: Punch feels the less prest [...] As both B.s are the best of the bunch. | |
| Sheffield Indep. 8 Mar. 7/5: The Stewards’ Steeplechase [...] has not a very grand lot entered, but the best of the bunch may be found in Redskins. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Forty Years a Gambler 49: We went on board the boat and let the artist take us all in a bunch. | |
| Isle of Man Times 6 Nov. 4/6: Buterworth and thompson were the best of the bunch. | |
| Billy Baxter’s Letters 50: They have had a run of luck and landed in among a bunch of marks. | |
| World of Graft 42: The Londoners are a thick-headed bunch. | |
| Types from City Streets 35: Me and me bunch ain’t no Irving-Terrys. | |
| Day Book (Chicago) 24 Jan. 11/2: The latest to attract attention is Clarence (Kid) Ferris, whom Jimmy Hurst [...] vows is the best of the bunch. | |
| Boy’s Own Paper XL 1 29: There’s a bunch of us goin’ up Hesitation way in a day or two. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Digger Dialects 14: bunch [...] (2) unit. | |
| Wash. Times (DC) 12 Apr. 4: If Mr Kabat considers a man a ‘cake-eater’ because he is refined and gentlemantly, then I am afraid Gorge Washington, Abraham lincoln and a great many other Americans [...] are a bunch of ‘cake-eaters’. | |
| Fighting Blood 12: The bunch stops in on their ways to school. | |
| (con. WW1) Patrol 218: ‘’s good a bunch o’ guys as you’d find’. | |
| ‘From Four Until Late’ 🎵 From four until late, she get with a no good bunch and clown. | |
| Dly Record (Glasgow) 18 Jan. 9/2: I know she thought my letters the best of the bunch. | |
| Really the Blues 33: You’re sure a gabby bunch of guys. | |
| USA Confidential 191: As brazen a bunch of freebooters as ever rustled a steer. | |
| letter 10 Nov. in Proud Highway (1997) 295: A bunch of his head-knocking friends. | |
| Good As Gold (1979) 340: You got there [...] by supporting a war with a bunch of other assholes who were too fucking corrupt to tell Johnson and Nixon they were full of shit. | |
| ‘Christmas Crackers’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] What do you think they are up the hospital, a bunch of wallies? | |
| Dark Spectre (1996) 6: Well, screw ’em, bunch of FOB’s! | |
| Black Tide (2012) [ebook] He had a job with some transport bunch. | |
| Indep. on Sun. Real Life 16 Jan. 8: Bikers are still a pretty fierce bunch. | |
| Thrill City [ebook] They’d packed a bunch of writers into a minivan and driven them around [...] South Australia. |
2. of objects, a quantity.
| Tough Trip Through Paradise (1977) 75: I started off for the bunch of bucks. | |
| No. 5 John Street 216: tilda: ‘Where’s the Collynies?’ low covey (decisively): ‘Other sahd o’ the sea. Reg’lar bunch of ’em.’. | |
| Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 26: Gimme a bunch of coin. | |
| letter in Dear Folks at Home (1919) 54: We have a bunch of fun up here. | |
| You Can’t Win 148: If a celebrant got hold of a bunch of easy money he or she ‘went on a tear’. | |
| Limey 39: He pulled a bunch more jobs after that. | |
| letter 22 Aug. in Thwaite Sel. Letters (1992) 107: Here is a little letter to welcome you back to England which is after all the best of the bunch isn’t it old boy. | |
| Thief’s Primer 71: I went out to my stash in the country [...] and dug me up a big bunch of Dilaudid. | |
| Sun. Times Rev. 21 Aug. 29: Just making a bunch of racket, we thought. | |
| Indep. Mag. 22 Jan. 14: I’ve got a bunch of dogs here anyway. | |
| Leather Maiden 91: ‘Do you know how many times I’ve heard that [joke]’ ‘Bunches?’ ‘Bunches on bunches with bunches thrown in’. | |
 | ‘Gato Negro’ in ThugLit Apr. [ebook] [She] owes a bunch with not long to pay it. |
3. (US) a roll of money.
| St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) 3 Dec. 17/7: ‘A bundle’ and ‘a bunch’ mean rolls of green bills . |
4. (US) someone important.
| Guilelmensian (Williams Coll.) 289: So he got Bellicose and went in with the Sport, and thought he was a large Bunch of it. |
5. used as adv.
| Drawing Dead [ebook] She talked a bunch [...] excited and eager. |